Thursday, January 16, 2014

How to Recognize Love

The last few weeks have been tough for us. Göran and I came down with a flu a couple of weeks ago, which took us each more than a week to get over. Then, Monday night, Göran started complaining of a blinding headache, and I had to rush him to the emergency room where they treated him and ran some tests to figure out what was going on. We were both exhausted by the ordeal, which it took him a full day to recover from.

In the meantime, it had been snowing. There have been two major snowfalls in the past week, and neither of us were up to getting out and shoveling. Yesterday, I finally had time and energy to do some chores around the house. There were so many neglected chores, it took me a couple of hours. I had "shovel the walk" at the back of my head, mainly because we had a grocery delivery scheduled, and I thought it might be impossible to safely deliver our groceries over the unshoveled sidewalk and up our snow-covered front steps.

Just as I was getting dressed and getting ready to go out and shovel, I heard the doorbell ring, and my heart sank. Our grocery delivery man had arrived. I half expected him to be there to tell me that he couldn't complete the delivery with all the snow blocking the entrance to our home. But when I opened the door, I was amazed by what I saw.

Our front steps, the sidewalk leading up to them, and the entire sidewalk running the length of our house had been shoveled. It was snowing lightly, and a bit of snow had begun to accumulate over the freshly shoveled steps and walk. But it was all still beautifully clear.

The delivery man was there with our groceries, grinning at me through a ski mask.

Whoever had cleared our walk for us had done it just in time for our grocery delivery, and had done it secretly and quietly, without sticking around long enough for me to see who they were or even to thank them.